''Northern Borders'' is a 2013 American drama film written and directed by

Jay Craven Jay Craven is an American film director, screenwriter and former professor of film studies at Marlboro College. He is based in Vermont. Craven is known for creating films on modest budgets, adopting many of the novels of author Howard Frank Mo ...

, and based on

Howard Frank Mosher Howard Frank Mosher (June 2, 1942 – January 29, 2017) was an American author of thirteen books: eleven fiction and two non-fiction. Much of his fiction takes place in the mid-20th century and all of it is set in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermon ...

's novel of the same name. It stars

Bruce Dern Bruce MacLeish Dern (born June 4, 1936) is an American actor. He has received several accolades, including the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor and the Silver Bear for Best Actor. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Suppo ...

Geneviève Bujold Geneviève Bujold (; born July 1, 1942) is a Canadian actress. For her portrayal of Anne Boleyn in the period drama film '' Anne of the Thousand Days'' (1969), Bujold received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress. Her other film cr ...

and

Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick Seamus Liam Davey-Fitzpatrick (born December 29, 1998) is an American actor. His first feature film role was as Damien Thorn in the 2006 remake of the horror film ''The Omen''. Personal life Davey-Fitzpatrick was born in New York City, and moved ...

Plot

In 1956, Austen Kittredge is sent to live with his conservative grandparents in Vermont. Austen Sr. and his wife Abiah have lived together for fifty years, but they do not speak to each other directly and actually despise each other. Austen, called "Tut" by his Egypt-obsessed grandmother (the daughters are Nefertiti and Cleopatra) must do farm chores, even though he dislikes the idea. Austen goes to school and meets Theresa, whose family is poor. In addition to living amidst the conflict between his grandparents, Austen must deal with their reluctance to join the modern world, hoping they will overcome this.

Cast

Reception

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews and ratings of products and services, such as films, books, video games, music, software, hardware, or cars. This system then stores the reviews to be used for supporting a website where user ...

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...

, the film holds an approval rating of 40% based on five reviews, with an average rating of 6.08/10." On

Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...

, the film has a

weighted average The weighted arithmetic mean is similar to an ordinary arithmetic mean (the most common type of average), except that instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others. The ...

score of 44 out of 100, based on four critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Peter Keough of ''

The Boston Globe ''The Boston Globe,'' also known locally as ''the Globe'', is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes. ''The Boston Globe'' is the oldest and largest daily new ...

'' wrote, "Craven's erratic tonal shifts from the whimsical to the sentimental trip up the episodic plot."

Neil Genzlinger Neil Genzlinger is an American playwright, editor, book reviewer, and theatre and television critic who frequently writes for ''The New York Times''. Family Genzlinger is a grandson of the late '' The Philadelphia Bulletin'' columnist Don Rose ...

of ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'' wrote, "The most interesting thing about the movie is its origin story."

References

External links

* * {{rotten-tomatoes, northern_borders 2013 films American drama films Films set in Vermont Films set in the 1950s Films set in 1956 Films based on American novels 2010s English-language films 2010s American films